At a recent offsite with Carta’s Navigators, we landed on an interesting topic: leadership roles sometimes mean that making progress on a professional initiative requires taking some personal risk.
This lesson was hammered into me a decade ago during my time at Uber, where I kicked off the Uber SRE group and architectured Uber’s self-service service provisioning strategy that defined Uber’s approach to software development (which spawned a thousand thought pieces, not all complimentary).

Lethain, authored by Will Larson, offers a unique perspective on engineering management, leadership, and organizational dynamics. Developers and engineering leaders can explore topics such as team building, career growth, and organizational design, gaining insights into building high-impact engineering organizations. With thoughtful reflections and actionable advice, Lethain serves as a resource for those navigating the complexities of engineering leadership.

Irrational Exuberance

Leadership requires taking personal risks and owning them. Bottom-up decision-making environments may require taking risks to make progress. Techniques to reduce risk include using engineering strategy techniques, modeling, prototyping, effective migrations, validation across networks, and engaging an executive sponsor.

Leadership requires taking some risk.